A blog about homesteading and trying to live more simply. Trying to do more projects on my own in order to become more self-reliant. For the fun of it. Lots of pictures. By Julia Franke. Simplicity for Julia

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Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Saving Seeds: Beans

Saving seeds is a great way to be even more economical in your garden. Every time you are able to provide something for yourself and therefore not purchase a product, you are closer to closer to self-sufficiency. It's better for the planet, and it is just neat to watch the way the natural world works.

Today, I'm going to talk about saving some seeds from Dragon Tongue Beans. They were fairly tasty, and looked rather awesome when they were growing. They were purple speckled.

At the end of the bean season, I left a few beans on the vine to dry out naturally. The area isn't the prettiest, but to me it looks like more nourishment for next year.

The unpretty patch of beans:

I pick the pods from the patch:

This is an individual pod, so you can see what it looks like all dried out:

Now, I simply split the pod open. Please excuse the dirt under my nails as I was out in the garden playing):

These were the fruits (perhaps beans?) of that single pod of labor:

Here were the beans from the rest of my labor (I love the pretty color purple!):

There were some brown beans in the pods. I removed those, as I thought they didn't look very fertile. But what do I know. I may be wrong on this one. I may also be right. I have no brown beans. Experiment and see what works:

I stored the dried beans in an old glass baby food container and will plant them next year. This task was easy, and relatively quick and really fun. I will continue to save seeds as the sense of personal satisfaction is HUGE.